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The United States might be stumbling toward a decline from which few great powers have ever recovered.
(www.washingtonpost.com)
stop ur gonna make me bust
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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The collapse of America is coming, and so am I!
What has led to “the relative decline in U.S. standing,” as the report asks? The opening chapter explains America’s problem starkly: “Its competitive position is threatened both from within (in terms of slowing productivity growth, an aging population, a polarized political system, and an increasingly corrupted information environment) and outside (in terms of a rising direct challenge from China and declining deference to U.S. power from dozens of developing nations).”
This decline is “accelerating,” warns the study. ...
What causes national decline? The Rand authors cite triggers that are all too familiar in 2024. “Addiction to luxury and decadence,” “failure to keep pace with … technological demands,” “ossified” bureaucracy, “loss of civic virtue,” “military overstretch,” “self-interested and warring elites,” “unsustainable environmental practices.” Does that sound like any country you know?
The challenge is “anticipatory national renewal,” argue the authors — in other words, tackling the problems before they tackle us. Their survey of historical and sociological literature identifies essential tools for renewal, such as recognizing the problem; adopting a problem-solving attitude rather than an ideological one; having good governance structures; and, perhaps most elusive, maintaining “elite commitment to the common good.”
No chance in hell on that last one, so here's hoping the rest of their analysis is right.
Exactly, there's no path towards turning things around politically. I think the last chance to save capitalism was the whole green new deal thing that Sanders was pushing. These were minimally necessary changes to arrest the decline, and the establishment soundly rejected that idea. So, we know for a fact that it's not possible to do anything differently.
I think the last chance to save capitalism was the whole green new deal thing that Sanders was pushing.
Capitalism is doomed? 
It's not a good thing, at least in the short term. Without the right intervention, the decline of capitalism is the rise of fascism.
This is the wrong way to think about things. The task of communists is not to save capitalism from itself (as the social democrats wish to do) out of fear of fascists taking over. It is to build a disciplined, militant and class conscious revolutionary movement such that when the time comes it is us and not the fascists who will lead the masses. It is a complete waste of your energies to worry about whether capitalism is declining too quickly. If it is declining quickly that just means we have a better opportunity to educate, agitate and organize, taking advantage of the discontent that the decline is causing. The more the collapse accelerates the more we must redouble our efforts.
So all the US would have to do to stop their decline is to get rid of the toxic nepotism, corruption and hateful, close minded, short-sighted behaviour that has been present in their system since day one and their people have been taught to worship as the only correct state of things.
I'm sure it'll be no problem for them.
lol right, they'd basically have to stop being American
As the cool kids say, "Inshallah."
Soon /s
Insh', wait for it, Allah.
Livemap started as UALiveMap, a project by pro-USA Ukrainians to map the donbass war. Later expanded to the more famous Syrian live map.
They will never cover a US civil war.
lol, hoping for a top down change in direction
Is Rand a trustworthy organization? I feel like whenever these types of studies emerge that it's for the express purpose of securing funding. Especially considering this was commissioned by the Pentagon.
Not doubting that the US is driving itself into a situation where they won't be able to recover, but I don't think a study of this nature was necessary to prove that.
RAND tends to be fairly sober all things considered. I think the interesting part of the study is the admission that there isn't really a clear path towards arresting the decline.
I often look at submissions like these (and there are many), gloating about the fall of the us empire, which is fair enough, but the articles/studies themselves are usually lamenting this fact (at the very least implicitly), and are essentially trying to drive support for maintaining it, like brainstorming solutions. I get confused, because it seems we are looking for direct confirmation of the decline of empire.. from channels of the empire? I think it's better to link to and discuss sympathetic material showing why and how the machine is failing and what we can build in its stead, not submissions linking to the machine's awareness of it and attempts to "correct" it from within the same narrow scope. The former will increase knowledge of theory etc, the latter is just a strange circlejerk. Seems like it might backfire. And is easily abused.
Ngl it feels like places such as WaPo that benefit from empire do not want the imperial decline but also do not in anyway wish to try an alternative except for imperialism and so will likely slowly support the shift towards direct fascism/barbarism that will come as none of the leadership nor media apparatus would ever willingly support socialism.
This is partly why I worry that these kinds of "confirmations" of the decline is doing anti-imperialism a disfavor (and also becomes an easy way for ops to confuse, misdirect, redirect) -- the alternative is not going to magically be a shift to a socialist economy, that needs concerted effort. The "alternative" is more likely to be what you described.
Of course I still think that there is value in discussing these kinds of pieces, but often the comments will echo simplistic "lolz" type sentiments which will just be used to represent socialists and sympathisers as a brainless, directionless, destructrive force, at which point you might as well be an anarchist, "rationalist libertarian" or some other individualistic aesthetic self expression, bleh.
Fwiw I'm not against gloating/mocking humor when it's principled, informed, on point, and cuts deep like what I assume hexbear tries to do with its memes and shit (I'm not too familiar yet).
Yeah that's true, in all honestly I fluctuate between being down to honestly discuss what the decline of US hegemony will lead to (fascism) while also being down to mock or meme the decline as well (given that both instances I can't really do out in the open where I'm at or risk being killed by some nutter because I'm an "ebill commie!!!"). Overall not looking forward to the next decade or two but then again to quote Lenin "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen", so who knows how this clusterfuck will eventually end.
It's already tripped and fallen over the edge
Inshallah
Unless Americans can unite to identify and fix these problems, we risk falling into a downward spiral.
Not going to happen, so the decline is inevitable
There's that hope again. The only question is how quickly. I won't live to see communism but it would sure be nice to live to see the fall of the last capitalist empire and hope on the horizon.
I have little hope for things getting better in the west during my lifetime, but I'm very optimistic for the rest of humanity. We already see the grip of the empire slipping everywhere now, and this will only accelerate in the coming years.
Bet, Republic of New Afrika bouta be on the come up
David "CIA mouthpiece" Ignatius